Back Into the Woods...AGAIN!

I might need to rename this blog The Bluestocking Hiker/Biker. The pain and tightness in my hamstrings and hips after last week's 9 miles gave me a MAJOR message....STOP RUNNING AND LET US HEAL!! If I hope to run 26 miles in 4 weeks I have to seriously rethink what I'm going to do moving forward. My efforts to train through the tightness are just NOT working. My last long run was at the end of February (20 miles) so this year I'll be having an unusually long tapering period in my marathon training - like 2 months of tapering! I'm going to take Jack's advice and hammer some arc trainer workouts indoors, but on the others days I will be biking and hiking.

I was all excited when I first bought my mountain bike two weeks ago only to realize that most trails are closed during the muddy, wet months of March and April. And because of the heavy rains recently it REALLY is a mess out there on the trails. Certain trails are completely impassable because of flooding. This forces me out on the roads which makes me very nervous as most of my friends who bike regularly have been hit by a car at least once. I am not at all comfortable with those statistics. So yesterday I decided to take a trip down to the Cape and ride the 22 miles back and forth (total of 44 plus) on the Cape Cod Rail Trail starting in Dennis and ending in Welfleet. What a blast!! Weather was kind of crappy, but definitely doable, plus I headed off trail a few times when I saw what looked like a fairly easy trail through the woods. I'm guessing I biked about 50 miles and after some research on the Internet I was disappointed to learn that this was only equivalent to about a 10 mile run. However, one BIG bonus was I FEEL GREAT TODAY!! No aches or pains and I had FUN.

While I'm really anxious to start running again, I'm also very excited about mountain biking this spring and summer. NEMBA is a great resource for finding good trails, and at this point I'm looking for ones that are mostly ranked as easy/moderate. I can hardly wait to explore the Myles Standish State Park (Plymouth) and the Shawme Crowell Forest (Sandwich) this summer.

At least my biker chick adventures and research serves as a distraction to my (non-existent) marathon training frustration.